The Project Gutenberg EBook of La Fiammetta, by Giovanni Boccaccio

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Title: La Fiammetta

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio

Release Date: November 7, 2003 [EBook #10006]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LA FIAMMETTA

BY

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

TRANSLATED BY JAMES C. BROGAN

1907.

INTRODUCTION

Youth, beauty, and love, wit, gayety and laughter, are the component
parts of the delightful picture conjured up by the mere name of Giovanni
Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers for all generations of men. This
creator of a real literary epoch was born in Paris, in 1313, (in the
eleventh year of Dante's exile), of an Italian father and a French-woman
of good family. His father was a merchant of Florence, whither he
returned with his son when the child was seven years old. The boy
received some education, but was placed in a counting-house when he was
only thirteen, and at seventeen he was sent by his father to Naples to
enter another commercial establishment. But he disliked commerce, and
finally persuaded his father to allow him to study law for two years at
the University of Naples, during which period the lively and attractive
youth made brisk use of his leisure time in that gay and romantic city,
where he made his way into the highest circles of society, and
unconsciously gleaned the material for the rich harvest of song and
story that came with his later years. At this time he was present at the
coronation of the poet Petrarch in the Capitol, and was fired with
admiration for the second greatest poet of that day. He chose Petrarch
for his model and guide, and in riper manhood became his most intimate
friend.

By the time he was twenty-five, Boccaccio had fallen in love with the
Lady Maria, a natural daughter of King Robert of Naples, who had caused
her to be adopted as a member of the family of the Count d'Aquino, and
to be married when very young to a Neapolitan nobleman. Boccaccio first
saw her in the Church of San Lorenzo on the morning of Easter eve, in
1338, and their ensuing friendship was n